On most days now, L.A. County’s largest juvenile hall has “adequate numbers” of probation staff, yet it still struggles to provide the services and activities required by law, according to the independent monitor overseeing the county’s compliance with a series of reforms.
Michael Dempsey, executive director of the national Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators and a court-appointed monitor for the last five years, testified in court Friday, Nov. 7, that the issue is not just how many probation officers show up for work, but rather who they are and how they’re deployed.
Many of the “bodies” allowing L.A. County to meet staffing minimums are redeployed probation officers from the traditional probation side of the department and they “do not want to be there,” Dempsey testified before Superior Court Judge Peter Hernandez.
“If you have the wrong people, who aren’t trained to work in this environment, you’re going to have bad outcomes,” Dempsey said. “Most days, you have plenty of bodies; sometimes they’re the wrong bodies and used in the wrong place.”
The Probation Department has repeatedly denied that redeployed field staff are not receiving the appropriate training to deal with day-to-day operations problems at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. Vicky Waters, the department’s spokesperson, said the agency is working to clean up the culture and operational issues, as well as chronic staff call-outs, and is hoping to finding a path forward “together” with the monitor and the state Department of Justice.
“We are looking at all levels of it,” she said.
Dempsey’s testimony took up the entirety of the second day of an evidentiary hearings to determine how to address L.A. County’s failure to comply with a series of reforms mandated by a 2021 settlement agreement with the DOJ. The state dragged the county back into court in October over its noncompliance and has requested the judge place the juvenile facilities into receivership, with Dempsey at the helm.
Much of Friday’s testimony revolved around whether L.A. County is providing enough training and how Dempsey determines whether the county is, or isn’t, in compliance with the staffing requirements in the agreement. Attorneys for the state guided Dempsey through a series of documents to articulate the county’s lack of compliance and its failure to provide the monitor’s team with up-to-date information on the improvements it says it is making.
The county, on the other hand, peppered Dempsey with questions to highlight how the confusing, and convoluted, terms of the reform agreement have overwhelmed both the monitoring team and the department. Dempsey spoke favorably of the capabilities of the department’s leadership and testified that he has seen improvements in recent months.
Throughout the day, Judge Hernandez repeatedly redirected both sides to stay on the topic of “staffing” and could be seen punching into a calculator during testimony on the number of extra “relief” staff needed to compensate for the high number of call-outs on any given day.
The county Probation Department has struggled with staffing for years. In August, the department had a 36% vacancy rate, more than three times the national average for a police department. Despite aggressive recruiting, about two-thirds of its new hires in 2024 had left within a year of graduating from the academy, though that figure had dropped to about 20% in the first three quarters of this year.
Dempsey, amid cross-examination from the county, explained that numbers only tell part of the story.
Staffing ratios in most units require one officer per eight youths during the day and one per 16 youths overnight, and Los Padrinos has “adequate numbers” on most days, he said, but those staff are not always properly assigned.
In one example, Dempsey described visiting the facility and seeing four officers sitting around in a unit with only one or two youths inside. That type of “misuse” is one of the reasons why the county can hit a number goal, but still struggles with getting youth to school on time, or to medical appointments, according to the testimony.
When shortages do happen, officers in ancillary roles get pulled into the units to help out, creating a ripple effect where, for example, not enough officers are available on the Crisis Intervention Team — which specializes in deescalation — or to transport youth to other parts of the facility.
When youth are stuck in a unit’s day room for hours, or staff members aren’t able to properly deescalate situations, there’s a greater chance of violence happening, which in turn leads to youth and staff feeling unsafe and to more call-outs, according to Dempsey’s testimony.
Daily quality-of-life issues are the “heart of the issue,” Dempsey said.
Last week, county Supervisor Kathryn Barger called out the department over similar concerns after she personally witnessed youth stuck inside watching TV during a visit and accused the department of lying about the programs and activities it offers them.
Robert Dugdale, the attorney for L.A. County, told the court that from Oct. 1 to Oct. 15, Los Padrinos met staffing ratios for every shift, attendance rates jumped to 88.2% and not a single youth missed a medical appointment.
Dempsey, however, said he couldn’t verify those figures because the county hadn’t provided his team with any proof, something that appeared to be a common barrier to his efforts to monitor compliance. Throughout the day, the county presented a number of recent documents as evidence of their compliance that Dempsey said he hadn’t seen before.
The perceived lack of cooperation from the county prompted Hernandez to say that he doesn’t believe county officials treat Dempsey “as part of the team.” Dempsey agreed, adding that it is “very rare” for the county to solicit his team’s assistance.
If the county would embrace Dempsey as an asset, “I think it could have a huge impact,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez directed the DOJ and L.A. County to meet before the next hearing on Nov. 21 to try to narrow the focus of the reforms to five core areas — uses of force, data management, staffing, education and room confinement — instead of juggling the hundreds of major and minor tasks outlined in the agreement all at once. If the county can tackle those five pillars, the smaller compliance issues will likely improve as well, Hernandez said.
The judge denied a request from the county to delay the next hearing to December.
“I want to keep moving forward and I think the more I push, the more results are going to take place,” he said.